


Crossing Paths

by the_mad_duchess



Category: Final Fantasy XV, Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 04:55:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16111253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_mad_duchess/pseuds/the_mad_duchess
Summary: Working a contract, Geralt comes across a pair of strange visitors in the woods.





	Crossing Paths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selador](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selador/gifts).



> Happy birthday, sel! I hope you have a great day and enjoy yourself thoroughly! Thanks for being a great friend and listening to my excited babbling all the time ♥

Geralt has seen a lot in his not inconsiderably long lifetime. It comes with the occupation - Witchers are always on the move, either driven forward by the prospect of a new contract with a bigger, badder monster to hunt, or driven away by the disdain and open hostility of the very people whose sorry arses they work to save.

 

Either way, life on The Path has made Geralt somewhat of a specialist on strange creatures. What he sees before him now is something that even he has to admit to never having seen before. The creatures he meets normally are more often than not fanged, most often accompanied by an awful body odour and the instinct to maim and claw and rip apart every poor soul who crosses their path.

Sometimes the rumours that lead him to face these creatures are an exaggeration; sometimes they are herald something far worse than expected.

 

This time the creature in front of him baffles even Geralt.

 

-*-

 

Beavers Borough is a small and unremarkable village. Its inhabitants are miserable, as most village inhabitants in this area are, barely scraping by, on the brink of starvation, poor and uneducated. Their minds are full of superstition, their garments full of patched up holes, and they sneer at Geralt when he rides by. He is used to it by now.

 

It’s one of those places Geralt doesn’t mind passing through quickly, filled with straw-decked, tiny huts, a single, muddy path winding its way through the settlement. Poverty and misery lie like a blanket across everything, and even the sunshine feels more dull than usual here.

 

There isn’t an inn, but roughly in the middle of the village, in a space that could be hardly called that, is an old, weathered message board. The wood has gone grey with age, full of cracks and nails where once parchments with inquiries were stuck. A couple of announcements of births make up the majority of the announcments, there’s someone looking to sell their wheelbarrow, and in the centre is what Geralt came for.

 

He plucks the contract from the board and examines it. It doesn’t have a seal, and the bounty seems quite small. But his gear needs fixing, and he the coin will be useful. Carefully, he rolls the contract up, stashes it in Roaches saddle bag and goes looking for the village elder.

 

-*-

 

The elder in question is a wrinkly old man, half Geralt’s age at most, but the hostile environment ages people fast in these parts. He snorts and looks at Geralt in disdain, but lets him into his tiny, smoke-filled hut.

 

“I’m here for the contract. It says you’ve seen a ghost light at night in the forest?” Geralt says. Neither he nor his conversation partner seem to be in the mood for idle chit-chat, and that suits him just fine.

 

The elder’s bushy eyebrows lift a little as he looks at Geralt. With his size, Geralt dwarfs most men, but the elder looks particularly short next to him, seemingly shrunk with age as is common for many old people. When he speaks, his teeth are visible - they’re few and stained a deep brown, speaking of a liking for chewing tobacco and probably other, more potent plants. Can’t fault him for it, considering the surroundings.

 

“Aye. There’s ghostlights in the woods, Master Witcher, an’ many have seen them. ‘tis not natural, Master Witcher, and we want ‘em gone.” The elder snorts and spits on the floor. “We don’t got much gold, but we’re willing to pay what we have b’fore we lose one of ours to the creature.”

 

-*-

 

Sunset finds Geralt paying the local woods a visit, on his way to the site the elder described to him.

 

Eerie green light sounds like a wraith, but the fact that it’s still visible in the village a mile away means it might just be something more sinister and otherworldly. So far, he hasn’t come across a wraith that glows that brightly.

 

The villagers Geralt spoke before leaving to told him that this had been going on for a couple of days, the glow starting right after one or another occurrence in the night sky that Geralt knows villagers like to put importance on but that doesn’t usually mean anything in his experience.

 

None of Beaver Boroughs inhabitants had felt encouraged enough to actually venture into the woods at night time to solve the mystery. A surprisingly smart move, Geralt thinks, something more people should think of doing instead of stupidly meeting their demise at yet other monsters claws.

 

In the afternoon, Geralt had oiled his sword in preparation, meditated for a while to escape the dreadful surroundings and had some luck with catching and eating a hare in the fields.

 

Now, night has fallen and there is no sign of any creature nearby at all. The air is cool, the dark like blue velvet thrown across the land, heavy and deep, suffocating the days activities.

 

There is no sign of anything besides the animals of the forest, and even those seemingly stay away from Geralt. It is strange, the woods usually bustling with life and movement, and the quiet and silence is a bad sign.

 

Animals staying away from a place is always cause for alarm, an indicator that what’s awaiting Geralt is often worse than expected.

 

An owl hoots in the distance, and slowly, a pale, green glow beings to filter through the forest and around Geralt. His witcher senses, sharper than any normal humans, are focused and the surrounding, and as the light gets stronger, the patter and rustle of paws on fallen leaves starts.

 

It’s is an eerie, creepy feeling that runs over Geralts back, the mysterious light all around him with no discernible source, and so he makes his way slowly towards the origin of sounds.

 

As he gets closer, his senses pick up on the presence of a human being - the low sound of breathing, the sound of bare feet on the ground, a quiet but regular heartbeat. A child, from what he can tell, close to the pawed creature he hears.

 

There’s an occasional squeaking sound Geralt can’t remember hearing before, and it sounds as if the animal is hopping around on four legs.

 

Quietly, Geralt draws his swords. There is no sense of danger, but only a foolish man goes into the woods in the middle of the night unprepared, and Geralt is no fool.

 

Before him, the woods open into a clearing full of grass and flowers, all of them in full bloom, their blossoms directed towards the middle of the clearing, where a small, black haired child sits.

 

The boy has hair as dark as the night that glimmers in the glow, with big, dark eyes and a pale, sickly complexion not helped by the all-black outfit he wears. He’s speaking to someone in a strange tongue Geralt has never heard before, interrupted by occasional squeaks from the strange creature in front of him.

 

And it is a strange creature indeed, one Geralt has never seen before. It vaguely looks like a very small fox, but its fur is a white that’s tinged green. Its eyes are far too big for its body, ridiculously sized in comparison to the rest of it, and it looks like a stiff breeze could easily turn them into makeshift wings.

 

The creature has an otherworldly feel to it, and seems less like an animal and more like a sentient, conscious being, with intelligent eyes and a deep red, crystalline horn on top of its head.

 

It looks utterly harmless, but Geralt knows that outward appearances can be quite deceiving. He has met many a monster whose outward appearance didn’t reflect their cruelty, and the worst of them wore a human face.

 

This is what he thinks about as he approaches the pair carefully, his sword in front of him and Axii in the back of his mind. The sound of his footsteps makes the both of them look up at him.

 

The child’s eyes have a sadness to it that Geralt has seen in many children that were victims of war, but his garments are strange but definitely a high quality, no comparison to what starved war orphans wear. He looks at Geralt’s approach and falls silent as the little creature in front of him turns around.

 

His companion seems to be the source of the glow, and its intelligent eyes look at Geralt. It squeaks, and over his head there’s suddenly something resembling a cloud, except is black and blocky and filled with a white, weird script and yellow circles with squiggles in it. It does that several times and Geralt expects something to happen, some kind of magic, some kind of trap, but there’s just… nothing. Except the squeaking.

 

Geralt carefully sheathes his sword and kneels down to speak to the boy. The moment the child’s gaze falls onto his scars and his eyes, Geralt sees a spark of fear.

 

“Easy.” he says in the same, soothing tone he uses to calm down Roach, and lifts his hands in front of him. It is not a good move to sit down in the middle of the forest, he knows, but the whole clearing is filled with a sense of peacefulness that’s hard to describe, and his medallion is heavy and unmoving against his chest. It’s as good a reason as any to relax.

 

The child looks at him with a bit of fear, but carefully reaches out to touch his hand. He can’t feel it against the thick leather gloves, but the kids hand looks tiny in comparison. The creature squeaks again, and the boy says something in that incomprehensible tongue of his.

 

The little white creature prances around Geralt, and he feels like it’s searching for something in particular. He knows what kind of impression he must make - unbathed, dressed in gear that needs a serious washing as well, his armour in dire need of repair, white hair disshelved, his chin covered in several days worth of stubble.

 

The squeaking starts again, with a more urgent note this time, and the child looks at the creature in alarm, and then back the Geralt.

 

Geralt tenses and stands up to ready himself for whatever danger might have caused this reaction, but the woods are still quiet around them. His sword in hand, he turns back to the child just in time to see the creature jump into the boy’s arms, his little horn glowing and ears waving in an unseen current of air.

 

Goosebumps rise across Geralts forearms, an electric tingling racing across his arms with the thick, heavy presence of magic in the air as he’s rooted to the spot, unable to move or cast a sign.

 

In a whirl of magic, the child and the creature vanish, and with them goes the glow. Darkness falls over the clearing, with a sudden cacophony of noises starting up again, as if the wildlife had collectively held its breath before. The dreamlike feeling Geralt’s been in during this encounter disappears, and no trace of the boy or the creature remains. There is no scent, no paw prints on the forest floor, not even indents in the grass where the boy sat.

 

Even for a Witcher, this is a strange thing.

 

-*-

 

When Geralt returns to the village, he stays there for a few days. Unexplained appearances of strange creatures don’t sit well with him, but after a few days with no more sightings of the boy, his companion or the glow in the dark, the villagers disdain and his budget make him move on. Magic is and always will be the speciality of witches, and he vows to ask Yen about it the next time he sees her.

 

-*-

 

Carbuncle watches Noctis return to the land of the waking slowly before disappearing.

 

Travelling worlds is hard work, and keeping a world’s inhabitants out of the dream sphere even more so. Some of its magic must have failed to work, tonight, to allow the stranger entry into Noctis’s and Carbuncles shared dream.

 

It is something that hadn’t happened in a long time, and maybe they’re better off only travelling actual dream spheres for now. It is harder to construct stable dreams than it is to borrow a different world’s environment for a bit, but the glowing cat eyes of today’s visitor had obviously scared Noctis, and Carbuncle intends to keep at least the dreams of his little friend free of fear and suffering.

**Author's Note:**

> I must confess that I have finished neither The Witcher 3 nor FF XV yet because rl has been getting in the way a lot lately.  
> There is no specific point in the Witcher timeline where this is set.


End file.
